Having bored the ass off anyone foolish enough to listen with stories of how breathlessly great JESSE MALIN was when he played in Limerick earlier this year, your reviewer had assumed he'd spent the time in between consolidating his position as a force to reckoned with in the States. After all, wasn't he supposed to be embarking on a lengthy Stateside tour followed by V Festival appearances and more besides following the release of the sublime 'Broken Radio' featuring Bruce Springsteen?
Not so, apparently, because instead Malin collapsed in Minneapolis in early summer and ended up in a New York hospital suffering from a spinal infection thought by the medics to have been brought on by serious intravenous drug abuse. Interesting, bearing in mind Malin has never used drugs intravenously in his life. Turns out in the end that our hero was actually struck down by the effects of a bug bite on his spine - one serious enough to require Malin to temporarily wear a body brace and take intravenous anti-biotics. Not exactly rock'n'roll in the traditional sense, whichever way you slice it.
Never one to lay down and die, though, Jesse's now back up and fighting and ready to do battle again, so what better time to re-acquaint ourselves with one of the key tracks from his 'Glitter In The Gutter' album: itself a contender for this writer's coveted Album Of The Year award.
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Now presented in a minimally different Dave Bascombe radio mix (a little more oomph? more space perhaps?), 'Tomorrow Today' was never really gonna need irrelevant beakbeats being inserted or a glossy MTV-ifying to make its' point and instead it simply reminds us that it's so Noo Yoik it hurts, with Paul Garisto's Bo Diddley-style pounding and majestic layers of Clash-like guitars provoking Malin into spilling memories of rides "on the old cyclone/ count me in like Dee Dee Ramone/ stayin' alive when you're 25" and getting gloriously lost in the ecstatic thrill of it all. It's true that devil-may-careness has rarely sounded so life-affirming and a timely reminder that Jesse Malin is one of the good guys we really don't want to die young.
Good to have you back and punching, my man.
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